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Episode 262: Start Finishing with Charlie Gilkey

On this episode, I chat with my good friend Charlie Gilkey. He’s the author of the book Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done and is the founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders, and changemakers take meaningful action on work that matters.

This episode is brought to you by the University of California Irvine Division of Continuing Education. Established in 1962, UCI offers education for adult learners in Orange County. But thanks to technology, their courses and certification programs in various fields are now available worldwide and online for just about anyone who’s interested. You can get 15% off of one (1) course by visiting http://ce.uci.edu/productivityist then enter the promo code timecrafting. Make sure you take advantage of this limited time offer soon as it is only valid until December 31, 2019 at 11:59 pm.

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Charlie and I have been friends for years and we see eye yo eye and a lot in the world of personal productivity. This book has been a long time coming and we spend time discussing the building of the book, the role of pacing in productivity, the idea of the “thrash” and how it impacts finishing, and much more. There’s a lot to unpack in this episode and I’m really happy to bring to you. Enjoy!

Talking Points

We talk about the relationship between starting and finishing to the calendar (4:28)

How important is pacing when it comes to productivity? (6:32)

Charlie explains where folks like him and I can get in trouble (8:45)

How does someone keep themselves from getting run over by other projects when they are focusing on other ones? (10:32)

This is something that didn’t make the cut during the editing process of Charlie’s book (12:25)

Charlie says that this is one of the pillars of productivity (14:09)

What is thrashing? (16:24)

What does Charlie think about making all projects…well, projects? (17:12)

How did Charlie deal with thrashing during the writing of his book? (26:54)

Charlie talks about getting past the “hard side of things” (36:30)

“A project in motion stays in motion. A project at rest stays at rest.”

Finishing is hard. But it can be done as long as you know that you’re going to face this idea of “thrashing” along the way, especially for things that really matter to you. I know I’m going to face that thrashing as I write my book (among other things) and knowing that is going to be there is the first step in seeing it through to the finish. The next step you could (and should) take is picking up Charlie’s book because it will help you with every other step thereafter.

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